NRAblog is pleased to report an exclusive summary of Executive Director
of General Operations Kayne Robinson’s remarks to today’s Meeting of
the Members.

Mr. Robinson has made an impressive effort to be on the Exhibit Hall
floor during this year’s festivities, chatting with industry folk and
NRA membersalike. Above, he chats with the staff of Boyt Harness
Company. Below, enjoy a condensed version of his remarks:

NRA has a close historic relationship with law enforcement. I spent 33 years as a police officer serving in all ranks. NRA Board and Management contains many professional police officers. With a Board like that, NRA will always stand with them.

Police are a vital line of defense, but the victim, the person targeted by the criminal, is the first line of defense.

It’s not that the police don’t want to be the first line of defense. They try hard to be there. It’s just that in most violent crimes, only the victim and the criminal are physically present.

The only person with a practical hope of mounting any resistance is the victim, or someone standing next to him.

Police perform a monumental and vital service. They solve crimes, arrest criminals, rescue people, and make society safer in a general sense.

One thing is little understood, however. Once you have been targeted as a victim by the criminal, you are on your own.

It is very unusual for a police officer to be able to stop your rape, your robbery, your burglary, your home invasion, your murder – in progress. These things happen in brutal real time.

Thomas Jefferson announced what the founders were thinking when he proclaimed, “An unarmed man can be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man.”

Professor Gary Kleck reminds us that private guns are used over two million times a year by citizens in legitimate self-defense – often not even fired.

In order for those great purposes of the Founding Fathers to stand through the ages, the force of armed citizens must be real. It must be known, and obvious.

People must really own guns in a practical way, not under the heel of government’s lock & key, or computerized confiscation list. People must really know how to use their guns.

That’s where there is this confluence of interest in our 2nd Amendment family – like the Mississippi, the Ohio, and the Missouri rivers all coming together.

NRA is the force protecting their rights. NRA trains millions to shoot, handle, and store their gun. NRA serves millions of collectors. NRA helps build ranges all over America. NRA trains millions in personal protection in the home, outside the home, and in the car. NRA assembles the best knowledge, authority, and experts in police firearms training.